The Shaman

“Hi, nice to meet you. My name is Aura.”
“Oh, that’s an unusual name, where does it come from”
“It’s my real name. My parents were hippies. They met at Timothy Leary’s ranch in Woodstock New York, dropped acid and conceived me. When my Mom was pregnant with me, she had a “Dream” where these beings told her what my name would be.”

This is an exchange I’ve been through thousands of times in my life. It’s a good way to meet people and break the ice, but it’s not actually totally accurate.

The LSD part, the Timothy Leary part and all that is true. But my Dad wasn’t actually a Hippie, he considered himself a Yippie. Most people don’t know who the Yippies were, or how they differed from the Hippies. To the Yippies, the Hippies were just a bunch of idle hedonists. Oh no, the Yippies were far smarter than the Hippies (or so they thought). They were intellectuals, extremists calling for revolution and the overthrowing of the Government – through violence if necessary.

No, these weren’t your garden variety ‘Peace & Love’ types. This is why nobody can understand when I describe the vicious, cruel and poisonous way with words and actions that was a rare talent my Father possessed. The man was a vinegar soaked hornet, in the middle of a black tarmac on a scorching July day in the Arizona desert.

He belonged to a group called ‘The Brotherhood of Love.’ This title is best said out loud with a heavy lacing of irony and your tongue planted firmly in your left cheek. You see, these guys were famous for being the heaviest drug users on the scene of the entire counter-culture hippie movement. It is common knowledge now that people on drugs abuse kids. It was a fact of life for me. Poison. I grew up soaked in poison, like the venom of the Diamond Back rattlers that my Dad used to collect.

It ran through my veins, choking my voice, freezing me from the inside out, paralyzing me into numbness. But not death. Never the sweet relief of absolution, never. Still, stiff, solidified in the icy oceans of frozen tears. But not dead.

This is the voyage of the Shaman. This is my story.

Over the years I overcame my abuse, reclaimed my power and danced in the depths of the oceans of soul where few have the courage to tread. I have been shattered and put back together again, and because of this I am able to lead others to their own true, authentic experience of life and living in true ecstasy. Not from knowledge and books – but like an arrow shot straight into the soul.

It is no accident that you have arrived here.
It is my invitation to you to join me in the celebration of the Great Mystery of All that Is.
It is my invitation to you to connect to the mystery, reclaim your wisdom and your soul and to feel the embrace of the Divine Feminine, the true power of creation, love and ecstasy that has been severed from our lives by modern society. It is my invitation to you to finally live free.